Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to a method operable in a computer readable medium and system for use by medical cannabis consumers, health professionals, growers, manufacturers, and sellers, which encompasses various computer interfaces, databases, and connectivity. This method and system utilize existing knowledge in the medical cannabis field while incorporating a newly built medical cannabis database for effective application of medical cannabis knowledge. Information collected from consumers is stored and aggregated for research purposes and may be used by medical professionals, growers, manufacturers, and other medical cannabis stakeholders to further develop the effectiveness of medical cannabis treatments and medical cannabis product provision.
Description of the Related Technology
The cannabis plant has many naturally occurring substances that are of great interest to scientific and medical communities. Isolated compounds from the cannabis plant include Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), cannabidiol (CBD), cannabichromene (CBC), cannabigerol (CBG), cannabidivarin (CBDV), among other compounds. While THC has psychoactive effects, CBD, CBC, CBG, and CBDV do not. Isolated compounds from the cannabis plant are called “cannabinoids.” There are a total of eighty-five (85) cannabinoids that have been isolated from the cannabis plant. Many researchers have confirmed the medicinal value of cannabinoids, including for the possible treatment of seizures, nausea, vomiting, lack of appetite, pain, arthritis, inflammation, and other conditions.
The IUPAC nomenclature of THC is (−)-(6aR,10aR)-6,6,9-trimethyl-3-pentyl-6a,7,8,10a-tetrahydro-6H-benzo[c]chromen-1-ol. CBD's IUPAC nomenclature is 2-((1S,6S)-3-methyl-6-(prop-1-en-2-yl)cyclo-hex-2-enyl)-5-pentylbenzene-1,3-diol). CBC has the IUPAC nomenclature of 2-methyl-2-(4-methylpent-3-enyl)-7pentyl-5-chromenol. These are among the most prominent compounds in the family of compounds extracted from the cannabis plant referred to as cannabinoids.
Cannabinoids may be isolated by extraction or cold pressing of cannabis plants. Plants in the cannabis genus include Cannabis sativa, Cannabis ruderalis, and Cannabis indica. These plants are the natural sources of cannabinoids. Cannabinoids are also available in synthetic forms. Methods to synthesize cannabinoids in lab settings were discovered and are currently practiced. Synthetic cannabinoids are more targeted than natural cannabinoids, in that the synthetic compound can come isolated without any other cannabinoids mixed in.
Cannabidiol is derived from hemp and is marketed in the United States as a dietary supplement. Various products containing cannabidiol have been marketed in recent years. Cannabidiol may be consumed by ingestion, by inhalation, or by transdermal delivery.
The cannabinoids CBD, CBG, and THC, have anti-bacterial properties, with fast acting mechanisms and a minimum inhibitory concentration at between 0.5-2 μg/ml for various Staphylococcus aureus strains.
Various medical marijuana products have become increasingly popular in the United States. Due to the placement of marijuana in Drug Enforcement Agency's Schedule I, the sale and prescription of medical marijuana has been limited in states where such practices are allowed. Recently, hemp products with cannabidiol became increasingly popular as an alternative. However, there is a clear gap in knowledge sharing in medical practices relating to medical marijuana.
Artificial intelligence is well utilized in medical practices, especially in integrating knowledge and assisting in dispensing rule-based decisions. Because medical knowledge is extensive, artificial intelligence plays a major role in updating and storing medical definitions and medical inter-relationships between many disparate concepts.
The Unified Medical Language System® (UMLS®) Metathesaurus® is a large, multi-purpose, and multi-lingual thesaurus that contains millions of biomedical and health related concepts, their synonymous names, and their relationships. The Metathesaurus® links alternative names and views of the same concept from different source vocabularies, and identifies useful relationships between different concepts.
The UMLS® also uses a Semantic Network, which contains a set of broad subject categories or semantic types that provide consistent categorization of all concepts represented in the UMLS® Metathesaurus® and a set of useful and important relationships, or semantic relations that exist between semantic types.
The third component of the UMLS® is the Specialist Lexicon. The Specialist Lexicon consists of a set of lexicon entries with one entry for each spelling, or set of spelling variants, in a particular part of speech. The Specialist Lexicon provides lexical information needed for the Specialist Natural Language Processing System.
Various medical software products exist to collect data on symptoms and diagnose patients. However, data collection and tracking patients' outcomes have not been focal points in these software products. In the medical cannabis field, due to Federal prohibition, there has been little development in merging medical cannabis use with information technology.
There exists a demand for a streamlined process to suggest and prescribe medical marijuana and related products through a database enabled by computer method with user interfaces. Data collected from the interactive process may be stored and used by medical professionals, producers, and marketers to evaluate trends and demands in the medical marijuana market.